Brutal cold-air outbreak is smashing records in the Midwest
![Ice covers the Lake Michigan shoreline on Wednesday in Chicago. Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images](/sites/default/files/styles/content_header_image/public/headlines/eibrlpbe3mi6tnnudumn7n5qqq.jpg.webp?itok=T9WLfuO5)
Temperatures dove more than 30 degrees below zero Thursday morning in the Midwest in this polar vortex outbreak’s last gasp, driving wind chills to dangerous levels and clobbering long-standing records.
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The cold snap is smashing all-time records in Northern Illinois. Moline, Ill., hit a new low late Wednesday night — the lowest temperature the city has ever recorded. The weather station at the Moline Quad-City Airport sent a reading of minus-29 degrees at 11:19 p.m., which was enough to break the record, and then continued to drop even further through the early-morning hours Thursday. As of 7 a.m., the lowest temperature Moline had reached was minus-33 degrees, a full five lower than the old record of minus-28, which was set in 1996.
Rockford, Ill., hit minus-30 degrees at 6:45 a.m. Central Time, which broke the old record of minus-27 set on Jan. 20, 1982.
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Norris Camp, in northwestern Minnesota, was the coldest location in the United States on Wednesday after temperatures there dropped to minus-48 degrees, measured by an official with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. With winds blowing at 5 to 10 mph, wind chill would have been around minus-65 degrees. Several other locations in Minnesota and North Dakota plunged to dangerous lows, including Warren, Minn. (minus-47); Lisbon, N.D. (minus-46); and Park Rapids, Minn. (minus-42).
Wednesday was the second-coldest day in Chicago’s history. The maximum temperature, minus-10, was set just after midnight, and then the mercury dropped to minus-24 later in the morning. The combination of those extremes results in a daily average of minus-17, just short of Dec. 24, 1983, when the average temperature was minus-18 in the Windy City.
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